The Facebook Predicament: Investment Protection, Thanks to Aspect

Last week, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal several companies and celebrities, including SpaceX, Playboy, Will Farrell and Cher left Facebook. Meanwhile, Facebook put a temporary pause on its app review process for new Messenger chatbots. Which means developers are currently unable to launch new automated messaging experiences on the Facebook ecosystem.

The temporary pause, expected to last only a couple weeks, will likely result in better rules to protect data, which is a positive for Facebook users and companies with a chatbot already in place, like our customer, Lidl UK.

Despite the improved protection, if a company chooses to leave Facebook are their chatbot hopes and dreams crushed?

Not at all.

First and foremost, a chatbot is about providing fast and convenient access to information, or conduct simple transactions with businesses. These experiences shouldn’t be bound to a particular channel – and there is usually very little that binds you to a particular channel. What’s important though, and what this crisis once again shows, is how important it is for a business to protect their investment and make strategic decisions regarding the software platforms that help with their customer experiences. Companies who have deployed a Facebook Messenger chatbot on channel-agnostic platforms such as our own Aspect CXP have nothing to fear. Their investment is safe. Thanks to our “design once, deploy anywhere” philosophy, companies can reuse their code to move their bot to another channel with only small, incremental investment – vs. a full rebuild.